Guild Wars 2

So for a long time this has been the most viable spec in pvp despite people not really liking this playstyle. Will Anet ever realise that people want to play their ranger without all that passive kitten and bad AI zoo?

i want a ingame Justin T-Shirt

1000gems – gogo anet

Most of the problem with the ranger builds/class is the stigma that has been attached to it by the compounded dislike given to it by the community across all of the games content except open world PvE.

Where that stigma comes from is the lack of actions per minute and “skillshots” it takes to be effective on the ranger. Most of that problem is rooted directly in the weapon selection.

Shortbow is probably the biggest culprit, because none of its cooldown skills are designed around the need to be used for a DPS improvement. That makes the weapon almost like a guild wars 1 ranger throwback; you autoattack to do damage, and utilize your utilities as necessary.

Now, having put in a fair amount of time on my other classes (I started with a main ranger and now play everything but ele), I don’t honestly see where rangers can reach the damage potential that other classes can, which looks to me like the issue stems from the Storm Spirits ability to do burst damage without power investment, the lack of actions per minute it takes to play the class and how that effects it’s already innate survival focus.

What I mean is, again, with certain weapons, rangers only really have to worry about using their cooldowns as utility. Because there are no real rotations needed that are necessary to reach the desired DPS output, more of the players attention can be focused on using tactics to sustain themselves, like dodges or weapon evades, which compared to a class like an engineer who has to juggle kits and aim skills, or a necro who has to aim many of their skills, makes the class rather forgiving, because there is almost next to nothing to whiff on a rangers Shortbow, versus whiffing something on an engi/necro which could result in either taking the damage you were trying to avoid, or missing the skill you needed to land.

Now, most of the issues I’ve described are related directly to the ranger shortbow. Other weaponsets, like the Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch combination, never really received any complaints from anybody, because of how they play versus how the shortbow plays.

Also, people just don’t like playing against AI, and then they don’t like it when that AI does something (how pushing a button that summons something that gives benefits to teammates versus pushing a button that gives boons that passively help teammates are different concepts, I’ll never know) on top of just being there.

But I guess the main issues would be:

-Poor weapon design that doesn’t require many actions per minute to be effective and doesn’t require any skill rotations to be effective
-AI entities in a competitive atmosphere that are (perceived) to be carrying the player using them into a skill tier that they (possibly) wouldn’t be in without them

Ultimately though the stigma is the biggest issue. It’s one thing to point out the shortcomings of the particular design of the class, but to ostracize and haze players who are playing the class is over the line. Those players shouldn’t be punished for the state of development that the class is in, and they shouldn’t be punished for enjoying their play time on that class.

If you’re going to blame somebody, blame ANet. Most of the changes that the competitive community asks for to be done to the ranger class (the serious, in depth criticisms the offer changes to make the class more competitive) are the same ones that the devs have seemingly been avoiding at all costs in the ranger subforum (along with your casual stuff since it is an audience derived of all players).

ItIsFinished.9462:

I have been kind of reluctant to post this as I believe it will become a flavor of the month kind of build. I say this because I have had nothing but success with this build.

You must be new to ranger forums. Variations of this build have been around for a long, long time. However, something like this is more common in PvE since it’s very glass cannon for PvP.

Food for thought! Anyone else notice how it took anet to make 5 maps in spvp 5+ years. Yet they can churn out holiday events mini games on the spot(Halloween mini games+ winters day). Not to mention that i see people having more fun and taking the events more serious than spvp and tpvp is pretty funny. Oh anet how have you lost your way:(

Jonathan Sharp said it might take a year to implement everything they want in pvp. I think they had plenty of time. Since 07 when i first heard about this game. 6+ years to add what was need from the beggining still bothers me.